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Raquel Mac Donald
Talented research executive and organizational assistant who steered organizational change initiatives, nurtured accountability, and delivered flawless management support. Game-changing professional supporting organizations, not just with a statement but active plans to change the way they function. Impeccable track record of formulating statistical and operational reports to assist in stakeholder decision-making. Proactively delivered strategic and research assistance to leaders as they work through global program-building strategies.Exceptional in taking initiatives and steering projects to completion.
Currently searching for a data science position that allows me to build tools using visualization and machine learning to help people explore and understand their data.
Education
M.S. in Program Evaluation and Data Analytics
Phoenix, AZ
Arizona State University
2022
- Graduating Dec 2022
- University Graduate
M.A. in International Relations
Utrecht, Utrecht, Netherlands
Utrecht University
2019 - 2018
- Thesis: U.S. and Park Chung Hee<U+0092>s Yushin Regime: Analysis of U.S. Foreign Policy towards South Korea-1972-1979
- University Graduate
Exchange Semester
Seoul, South Korea
Yonsei University
2017
- International Relations & Diplomacy -Korean Language Intensive
Research Experience
Graduate Research Assistant
Vanderbilt University
TBILab (Yaomin Xu’s Lab)
2020 - 2015
- Primarily working with large EHR and Biobank datasets.
- Developing network-based methods to investigate and visualize clinically relevant patterns in data.
Research Assistant
Tilburg, Noord Brabant, Netherlands
Tilburg University
2018
- Articulated and managed multiple research projects and completed various data analysis projects. Assisted university professors with a variety of tasks, including preparation for upcoming classes.<U+00A0><U+00A0>
Research Assistant
Netherlands
Rock, Paper, Scissors: The Instant Leadership Solution
2018
- Significantly contributed to the background research for the internationally acclaimed book <U+0091>Rock, Paper, Scissors: The Instant Leadership Solution.<U+0092> Won the NYC Big Book Award in 2021.
Data Science Researcher
Johns Hopkins University
Data Science Lab
2018 - 2017
- Building R Shiny applications in the contexts of wearables and statistics education.
- Work primarily done in R Shiny and Javascript (node and d3js).
Undergraduate Researcher
University of Vermont
Rubenstein Ecosystems Science Laboratory
2015 - 2013
- Analyzed and visualized data for CATOS fish tracking project.
- Head of data mining project to establish temporal trends in population densities of Mysis diluviana (Mysis).
- Ran project to mathematically model the migration patterns of Mysis (honors thesis project.)
Human Computer Interaction Researcher
University of Michigan
LabInTheWild (Reineke Lab)
2015
- Led development and implementation of interactive data visualizations to help users compare themselves to other demographics.
Industry Experience
I have worked in a variety of roles ranging from journalist to software engineer to data scientist. I like collaborative environments where I can learn from my peers.
Project Associate
Arlington, VA
CRDF Global
2022
- Worked on the DPRK Counterproliferation Finance team to help conduct trainings worldwide on countering DPRK’s measures to gain currency to fund their WMD programs.
Secretary
the Hague, the Netherlands
Embassy of the Republic of Korea
2021 - 2019
- Programmed embassy team meetings, international and domestic visits, government meetings, and interactions with external agencies. Formulated accurate and timely reports for executive decision-making.
- Strategized Ambassador schedule with calendar management, travel planning, expense management, internal and external meetings, and diplomat conferences.
Engineering Intern - User Experience
Burlington, VT
Dealer.com
2015
- Built internal tool to help analyze and visualize user interaction with back-end products.
Data Science Intern
Burlington, VT
Dealer.com
2015
- Worked with the product analytics team to help parse and visualize large stores of data to drive business decisions.
Software Engineering Intern
Carpinteria, CA
Conduce
2014
- Incorporated d3.js to the company’s main software platform.
Teaching Experience
I am passionate about education. I believe that no topic is too complex if the teacher is empathetic and willing to think about new methods of approaching task.
Data Visualization Best Practices
N/A
DataCamp
2019
- Designed from bottom up course to teach best practices for scientific visualizations.
- Uses R and ggplot2.
- In top 10% on platform by popularity.
Improving your visualization in Python
N/A
DataCamp
2019
- Designed from bottom up course to teach advanced methods for enhancing visualization.
- Uses python, matplotlib, and seaborn.
Guest Teacher
Dongen, Noord Brabant, NL
Cambreur College
2018
- Delivered guest lectures on cultural communication to a 30-member high school class based on personal experience of spending 16 years in the US followed by the Netherlands.
Advanced Statistical Learning and Inference
Nashville, TN
Vanderbilt Biostatistics Department
2018 - 2017
- TA and lectured
- Topics covered from penalized regression to boosted trees and neural networks
- Highest level course offered in department
Advanced Statistical Computing
Nashville, TN
Vanderbilt Biostatistics Department
2018
- TA and lectured
- Covered modern statistical computing algorithms
- 4th year PhD level class
Selected Data Science Writing
I regularly blog about data science and visualization on my blog LiveFreeOrDichotomize.
Using AWK and R to Parse 25tb
N/A
LiveFreeOrDichotomize.com
2019
- Story of parsing large amounts of genomics data.
- Provided advice for dealing with data much larger than disk.
- Reached top of HackerNews.
Classifying physical activity from smartphone data
N/A
RStudio Tensorflow Blog
2018
- Walk through of training a convolutional neural network to achieve state of the art recognition of activities from accelerometer data.
- Contracted article.
The United States of Seasons
N/A
LiveFreeOrDichotomize.com
2018
- GIS analysis of weather data to find the most ‘seasonal’ locations in United States
- Used Bayesian regression methods for smoothing sparse geospatial data.
A year as told by fitbit
N/A
LiveFreeOrDichotomize.com
2017
- Analyzing a full years worth of second-level heart rate data from wearable device.
- Demonstrated visualization-based inference for large data.
MCMC and the case of the spilled seeds
N/A
LiveFreeOrDichotomize.com
2017
- Full Bayesian MCMC sampler running in your browser.
- Coded from scratch in vanilla Javascript.
The Traveling Metallurgist
N/A
LiveFreeOrDichotomize.com
2017
- Pure javascript implementation of traveling salesman solution using simulated annealing.
- Allows reader to customize the number and location of cities to attempt to trick the algorithm.
Selected Press (About)
Great paper? Swipe right on the new ‘Tinder for preprints’ app
N/A
Science
2017
- Story of the app Papr made with Jeff Leek and Lucy D’Agostino McGowan.
Swipe right for science: Papr app is ‘Tinder for preprints’
N/A
Nature News
2017
- Second press article for app Papr.
The Deeper Story in the Data
N/A
University of Vermont Quarterly
2016
- Story on my path post graduation and the power of narrative.
Selected Press (By)
Lithuanian Sunday Show
N/A
Lithuanian Radio & Television
2020
- Discussed the US Presidential election with other attendees and hosts.
Wildfires are Getting Worse, The New York Times
N/A
The New York Times
2016
- Deliberated upon the U.S. Presidential elections and celebrity candidatures
- Data in collaboration with NASA and USGS
Who’s Speaking at the Democratic National Convention?
N/A
The New York Times
2016
- Data scraped from CSPAN records to figure out who talked and past conventions.
Who’s Speaking at the Republican National Convention?
N/A
The New York Times
2016
- Used same data scraping techniques as Who’s Speaking at the Democratic National Convention?
A Trail of Terror in Nice, Block by Block
N/A
The New York Times
2016
- Led research effort to put together story of 2016 terrorist attack in Nice, France in less than 12 hours.
- Work won Silver medal at Malofiej 2017, and gold at Society of News and Design.
Selected Publications, Posters, and Talks
Charge Reductions Associated with Shortening Time to Recovery in Septic Shock
N/A
Chest
2019
- Authored with Wesley H. Self, MD MPH; Dandan Liu, PhD; Stephan Russ, MD, MPH; Michael J. Ward, MD, PhD, MBA; Nathan I. Shapiro, MD, MPH; Todd W. Rice, MD, MSc; Matthew W. Semler, MD, MSc.
Multimorbidity Explorer | A shiny app for exploring EHR and biobank data
N/A
RStudio::conf 2019
2019
- Contributed Poster. Authored with Yaomin Xu.
Taking a network view of EHR and Biobank data to find explainable multivariate patterns
N/A
Vanderbilt Biostatistics Seminar Series
2019
- University wide seminar series.
Patient-specific risk factors independently influence survival in Myelodysplastic Syndromes in an unbiased review of EHR records
N/A
Under-Review (copy available upon request.)
2019
- Bayesian network analysis used to find novel subgroups of patients with Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS).
- Analysis done using method built for my dissertation.
Patient specific comorbidities impact overall survival in myelofibrosis
N/A
Under-Review (copy available upon request.)
2019
- Bayesian network analysis used to find robust novel subgroups of patients with given genetic mutations.
- Analysis done using method built for my dissertation.
R timelineViz: Visualizing the distribution of study events in longitudinal studies
N/A
Under-Review (copy available upon request.)
2018
- Authored with Alex Sunderman of the Vanderbilt Department of Epidemiology.
Continuous Classification using Deep Neural Networks
N/A
Vanderbilt Biostatistics Qualification Exam
2017
- Review of methods for classifying continuous data streams using neural networks
- Successfully met qualifying examination standards
Asymmetric Linkage Disequilibrium: Tools for Dissecting Multiallelic LD
N/A
Journal of Human Immunology
2015
- Authored with Richard Single, Vanja Paunic, Mark Albrecht, and Martin Maiers.
An Agent Based Model of Mysis Migration
N/A
International Association of Great Lakes Research Conference
2015
- Authored with Brian O’Malley, Sture Hansson, and Jason Stockwell.
Declines of Mysis diluviana in the Great Lakes
N/A
Journal of Great Lakes Research
2015
- Authored with Peter Euclide and Jason Stockwell.